Frenchman Richard Plaud built the world record for the tallest matchstick structure of the Eiffel Tower in Saujon, Charente-Maritime, France on January 7, 2024.

47-year-old Richard Plaud spent 8 years building a 1:45 large-scale model of the Eiffel Tower out of headless matchsticks to beat the Guinness World Record for the tallest matchstick structure. The title previously belonged to Toufic Daher, who won the Guinness World Record in 2009 by also building the Eiffel Tower out of 6 million matchsticks that measured 21.4 feet high.

Plaud’s dream was to beat this world record, and he finally did it, with his model of the Eiffel Tower beating the previous record with a height of 23.5 feet, which used over 700,000 matchsticks to complete. At first, Plaud began purchasing large amounts of matches from supermarkets and removing the flammable tip himself, but then later began working with a French manufacturer to deliver already headless matchsticks to him for his project.

He submitted his work to the Guinness Book of World Records soon after finishing in late December last year. However, according to Guinness, Plaud’s work was disqualified because, according to Guinness, the matches used in the project were headless, and therefore, not commercially available and weren’t recognized as standard matchsticks. Plaud was deeply hurt when Guinness rejected his matchstick masterpiece.

Things began to look up on January 7th, however, when Guinness decided to reverse their decision, handing Plaud the world record and getting his model certified. “It seems that we have been heavy-handed in the application of our rules in this case,” Guinness World Records Director of Central Records Services Mark McKinley said in an email during the reversal. “We are therefore very happy to award Richard with the Guinness World Records title, and we have corrected some inconsistencies within our rules which now allow the matchsticks to be snipped and shaped as the modeller sees fit.”